Studio project by:
Raffael Stegefellner
Tilman Fabini
Oliver Hamedinger

Considering the problem of desertification as a point of departure, the project is not about fighting climate change; but instead, learning how to co-exist with it and use it as a driving factor.
With the use of solidified sand, the dune barrier is preserving the city from the Sahara, while creating recreational semi-shaded areas and a pathway alongside the border with the desert.
Old sacred islamic scripts are moved to the new research center, where they are encrypted in a new way of data storage alongside climatics of the area.
The building itself stands between two completely different realms of being a high-tech facility and an ancient temple at the same time.
By storing and directing the water available from the annual flood of the river, the water system helps the irrigation and greeneries.

Studio project by:
Miriam Löscher
Elizaveta Karpacheva
Soroush Naderi

Lake Atitlan is an essential resource for the sustenance and economic growth of local indigenous communities that inhabit the lake's shoreline; local water management systems and poor agricultural practices give rise to persistent toxic algae blooms - a water contamination phenomenon that disrupts human activity and the local biodiversity.
The proposed scheme is centered around the integration of a geothermally powered water purification infrastructure that aids the prevention of toxic algae blooms along with the consistent upkeep of water purity. At the same time, an algae based circular economy plays out through the conversion of the raw algae biomass back into its state as a valuable raw material, for the local manufacturing of by-products and actual building components used to fabricate the inhabited aggregation clusters that line the masterplan.

Studio project by:
Sarah Agill
Shpend Pashtriku
David Kipp
Sharon Sarfati

The project aims to deal with the consequences of wildfires.
It is strategically divided into three phases that follow the pre-seasonal, seasonal, and post-seasonal behavior of wildfires, but its focus resides in the post-seasonal one. Setting small prescribed fires in grass areas, collecting and transporting the smoke out of them, using drone technology, for the purpose of the smoke seed germination process, which is used for faster-growing more healthier plants.
In that order of events, the project aims to give back to nature what was taken, creating in the same time a natural self-sufficient system for technology, science, nature, and humans.

Studio project by:
Gaowei Zhou
Anastasia Smirnova
Olja Radovanović

The AgroPraxis project is aimed to tackle water scarcity and food insecurity issues of N'djamena City in Chad, Africa. Chad faces many challenges in the water sector. A large part of the country suffers from a chronic shortage of water, even though the country has extensive underground and surface resources. The existing infrastructure does not guarantee secure access to water for all global warming and a growing population further complicate the situation. This program intends to provide people with advanced farming systems which have proven their effectiveness and are gaining popularity among farmers, bringing significant yields and prosperity. As well as create a sustainable environment- a brand-new human-made ecosystem for the wellbeing of next-generation communities. The program is designed to include farming centres for training people and supporting farmers and families, markets and research centres for further development and prosperous future of the brand-new settlement.

Studio project by:
Adham Sinan
Alexandra Terekhova
Nikita Ponomarev

The project is located in the far north in Siberia, next to the City of Norilsk. The technological base of the project uses the emission that is already happening in the city of Norilsk, and the danger of the melting permafrost to power up the new generated city.
The concept takes the socio-political problems of the existing city and tries to unite them with a newly opened Lab City. This creates a life-friendly environment for the people who will live and work there and make an important contribution to science with their research on the still unexplored permafrost. Additional to that the concepts includes a lot of protected green spaces.
All in all, the project creates a modern, life-friendly city, which creates a modest situation in such a difficult and unfriendly environment.

Studio project by:
Louis Braugner
Mohammed Abdelhady Omar
Ibrahim Duskmukhamedov

The geothermal afforestation accelerator near Reykjavik in Iceland aims to be a forest boot camp with the goal to find surviving species which can adapt to Icelandic climate change.
Unsuitable soils on the slopes of Iceland should become a new place for re-greening. Iceland needs to restore the vegetation cover that has been lost over the years to climate change and human action.
The landscape of the site is the result of predicted erosion over the years, divided into zones with different exposure to weather conditions to which plants will be exposed: the upper parts are drier and windier, while the lower parts are wetter and shaded. Using architectural "gadgets" and soil heating, the project simulates climatic conditions here in 100 years to speed up the process of plant selection and adaptation to the new projected future. The project is reactive to change, being inherently proactive in global climate change.

Studio project by:
Simon Weishäupl
Arkady Zavialov

Hydrocarbons contribute to a vast amount of carbon emissions which have been a major factor in some of the world's challenges, including natural disasters and extreme weather leading to water shortages in many regions. Africa and the Middle East are massively affected by these water shortages and rely heavily on desalinated seawater. In these regions aquifers, subterranean reservoirs, that were once full of water are drying up and projections show most will be dry by 2030.
RECHARGE proposes to build a solar desalination plant and technology to push water inland to the aquifers in a process known as aquifer recharge. Allowing the generation of new urban habitats in fertile, water rich environments. Renewable energy in the form of one of the region's most available resources, Solar Energy, will power and sustain the recharge process and urban life.

Prediploma project by:
Joseph Cook

The project about the Future of Bangkok, that intends to conserve the city as the risk of flooding continues to rise. The hypothesis is a kind of concept of a symbiotic, sort of poetic way of working hand in glove with nature and technology in order to create a new human-made ecosystem from re-thinking urban intervention design.

Prediploma project by:
Witchaya Jingjit

The project looks at future developments in the energy sector and the attitudes towards urbanism that they might trigger. As the energy industry is moving towards greener production methods, the world is left to deal with the infrastructure that has been generated since the industrial age. One promising scenario is that of repurposing existing gas and oil pipeline infrastructure for green hydrogen transportation - in this case, the existing pipelines would become the binding element in between hydrogen processing hotspots. While this alternative brings a compelling solution in terms of pipeline afterlife, it also unlocks an important primary resource - the underground. The project focuses on investigating this new set of circumstances in which urban planning can be probed as an alternative to the ever harsher realities of terrestrial urban settlements.


Prediploma project by:
Patricia Tibu

If natural occurrences could change the climate easily, how should we control it?
Taal volcano in the Philippines is one of the most dangerous active volcanoes in the world. It has erupted many times and people are always threatened, but the Taal volcano has more geothermal energy than others.
The strategy focuses on a manageable volcano system consisting of two parts: first, volcano power system preventing the volcano eruption by drowning the temperature, second, remote control system which harnesses and transfers the energy of volcano to the city.
Maybe we cannot really prevent all natural occurrences from happening, but it is possible for the transition-nature to become a reality.


Prediploma project by:
Zhiyi Zhang